Discreet charm of the pinot

The discreet and charming Jean-Pierre de Smet makes discreet pinot noir. You
almost feel sorry for the shy young thing, with its delicate cherry fragrance
and bright summer-cherry and red-berry flavours. Way too discreet for the likes
of the average Aussie palate and its abiding preference for sledgehammer fruit
and alcohol.

Alas, de Smet's wine - Domaine de l'Arlot Clos des Forets Saint-Georges, from
the lighter 2000 vintage - was politely savaged (but savaged nonetheless) by the
Australian audience at the recent Stonier International Pinot Noir Tasting,
where he was a guest. We missed the point entirely.

Pinot is about the small things, the nuances. Sometimes you have to look a
little harder to find the possibilities. The Clos des Forets was a lesson in
observation and also a lesson in elegance, something de Smet is passionate about
in his pinot. This is not to suggest it was a great wine. It wasn't. But it did
deserve a better hearing.

"To me, the typicity of pinot noir is to be fine, to be classy, to be
elegant, long and complex," he says. He means it.

When de Smet was appointed winemaker at Domaine de l'Arlot in 1987, many in
Burgundy were under the bewitching influence of guru consultants such as Guy
Accad, who beefed up the power and structure of Burgundies. The small things,
the nuances, became harder to pick.

"The wines he (Accad) made," de Smet says, "it was really difficult to know
if it was from Vosne-Romanee or Gevrey-Chambertin, and sometimes it was more
difficult to know if it was from Burgundy or the Rhone Valley."

"His methods, to me, were really extreme."

De Smet resisted and put his faith in the kind of wines he had made with
friend and mentor, Jacques Seysses at Domaine Dujac at Morey-Saint-Denis. After
half a lifetime in accountancy and sailing in New Caledonia, de Smet turned to
winemaking at the relatively late age of 40 and went to learn the craft from his
old university friend Seysses.

Seysses, he says, introduced him to the great wines of the world and the
concept of "elegance" in pinot noir making.

Both have stuck. De Smet is one of the least chauvinistic and most
open-minded of Burgundy winemakers you're likely to meet, and believes great
pinot noir wines are made everywhere, probably even in Australia where his
winemaking friends include Geraldine McFaul at Stonier and Peter Leske at
Nepenthe. During the Stonier International Pinot Noir Tasting he graciously
complimented the Stonier 2001 Reserve and described the Bannockburn 2000 Serre
and TarraWarra 2001 pinot overall as "more rustic and less elegant." The
Knappstein Lenswood Vineyards 2002 pinot, while "powerful and rich" was
nevertheless not the kind of wine he would sit down to the table with. But why
shouldn't Australia make great pinot, de Smet asks.

The differences between great Burgundy and great pinot noir grown outside the
region are becoming less obvious, he argues, so it gets back to the small things
(again), the nuances, that elevate the grape into great wine.

Similarities between Domaine de l'Arlot and Dujac are there for all to see.
De Smet doesn't deny being influenced by Seysses.

At Premeaux-Prissey, de Smet is further south than Seysses on the Cote de
Nuits but both share the region's limestone and clay soils. In winemaking, they
share common traits and some uncommon ones.

De Smet doesn't use much sulphur and lets the grapes ferment naturally at a
low temperature to avoid too much extraction.

Unlike Seysses, de Smet favours maturation for up to 16 months in one-third
new oak for his pinot (as opposed to all-new oak for Seysses) and is absolutely,
positively in favour of biodynamic wine growing.

The latter has led to an evangelical-style crusade against genetically
modified vines. In the mid-1990s the French government allowed experimental
growing of genetically modified chardonnay and pinot noir in Champagne. The
ensuing outrage, according to de Smet, resulted in the the vines being "put in
the fridge" but, he says, this year they were taken out again and re-planted by
the government's agricultural institute in Alsace.

A group of influential Burgundy makers, of which de Smet is a founding
member, now hopes to stop more plantings.

"We are very upset, very angry," he says of the new plantings in Alsace. "The
experimentation in the labs are not finished, and we think they should finish
experimenting inside, prior to planting outside the vines."

"So far, we don't know what will happen to the wines, nature or the people,"
he says.